


Revolutionaries

by mirrorfade



Category: World of Warcraft, World of Warcraft - Various Authors
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-08
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2020-06-24 22:07:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19732732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mirrorfade/pseuds/mirrorfade
Summary: Grunts are chosen more for their ability to hit things very hard than their ability to think and this one is no different. It’s an acceptable state of things. One day Ketz will advance higher in the ranks of Horde mages and be assigned better bodyguards. And when that happens, she’ll remember their names. These days she goes through them too quickly to bother.Grunts come in batches. One’s pretty much the same as the other. Unfortunately for Ketz, this one - moonfaced and young, so stupidly young -talks.“Master Gearstruck? Master? Why are there so many beggars in Zuldazar?”**A mage and a grunt get caught up in a small treason, and a big change.





	Revolutionaries

Grunts are chosen more for their ability to hit things very hard than their ability to think and this one is no different. It’s an acceptable state of things. One day Ketz will advance higher in the ranks of Horde mages and be assigned better bodyguards. And when that happens, she’ll remember their names. These days she goes through them too quickly to bother. 

Grunts come in batches. One’s pretty much the same as the other. Unfortunately for Ketz, this one - moonfaced and young, so stupidly young — _talks._

“Master Gearstruck? Master? Why are there so many beggars in Zuldazar?”

Zuldazar reminds Ketz uncomfortably of Silvermoon. Everything glimmers until you turn a corner and there’s the drunk curled up around his bottle, or a leper on a long, gold chain. And the city burns in the sunlight. A goblin has to be careful where she walks, or the steps - even the bricks are made of gold - might burn her just because. 

It’s a beautiful city. Ancient, proud, and only slightly battered by the times. It’s also aggressively decorative. 

Ketz has an instinctive distrust of anything pretty. She prefers the jungles of Nazmir, where everything has the decency to admit it wants to kill you. 

“You ever been to a city that doesn’t?” she shoots back, trying and failing to focus on her inventory checklist. Because _someone_ must keep track of how much food an expedition needs and ensure that it gets properly stowed or the whole mess of them might starve and that would be a fucking embarrassing way to die, wouldn’t it?

The grunt frowns. Her hair is pulled up into a proud tail but her face is soft with baby fat. Barely an adult. Hasn’t earned proper armor yet, either, or a better weapon than the battered hammer she lugs around. Just a cog in the machine, as stupid and replaceable as the one that came before. Oh sure, orcs won the genetic lottery when it comes to the size of the arms and the span of those mountainous shoulders, but grunts are grunts regardless of species. Anyone with brains wouldn’t be stuck playing bodyguard to a mage when they could be smashing heads for the glory of the Warchief. And if this one is smart enough to form complete sentences, she’s still not smart enough to form any thoughts worth listening to. 

There’s a saying among the civilized races. You get brains or you get brawn with orcs. You very rarely get both. 

Ketz has opinions about those civilized folk, like she has opinions on everything else, but she abides by a simple code: grunts are replaceable. For the sake of her sanity, she remembers them as an interchangeable mass, one gear switched out to replace a broken part. It certainly wouldn’t help anyone if she thought of them as people with names and philosophical questions about the nature of society. Not when this one is going to die — maybe not today or tomorrow, but soon enough — and get another one shuffled in to fill the gap. 

Orcs are fine warriors. It was an orc who trained her as a mage. 

Grunts are cogs. Grunts shouldn’t talk, for the sake of everyone’s collective sanity. Ketz is fairly certain even the humans operate on a similar principal. 

She returns to her checklist, crossing out items as she murmurs under her breath. Dried fish, flour, salt, oil for frying yet more fish…

“I served at the Crossroads, master. In the Barrens. No beggars there.”

Ketz flicks her ears back. “The Crossroads isn’t a city. Try again.”

“Ogrimmar—”

“Ogrimmar has bigger problems. And the guards kick a out anyone who can’t pay their way, like everywhere else. So I guess the trolls are fucking saints down in their golden city, huh? Beggars everywhere but hey, at least they’ve got a place to sit and starve. Ain’t that nice.”

The grunt doesn’t have anything to say to that. 

Ketz eyes her, distrusting the sudden silence. 

The grunt’s face is scrunched up, eyes narrowed in concentration. Somebody’s put on their thinking cap, huh?

Ketz shakes her head. “Go lift something heavy, will you?”

“What?”

“Over there, stupid. Go help the others. _Away from me._ ”

The grunt’s face cycles through several emotions with glacial slowness. The last one is a profound sadness, eventually swallowed down as the grunt turns and goes to do as she’s told. Ketz goes back to her checklist and tries vainly not to feel like a bully. It doesn’t matter, really. This one will be gone soon enough. 

***

The grunt survives. This would be horribly inconvenient except that she saves Ketz’s life in the process. 

The ambush is expected, really. They’re a column of troops and supply-laden kodo going through unfriendly territory. Ketz would be a little disappointed if they weren’t ambushed at least twice before meeting their destination. 

The blood trolls don’t disappoint. Their magic doesn’t shake the trees or rend the earth but instead comes to them as a thick, oily sort of mist. It lingers there, stinking of dead flesh and rotting plants, and Ketz has time to slap a bug off her arm because it occurs to her that the animals have fled. There are no birds, no lizards darting underfoot. There’s nothing except the insects and the strange heat haze that’s gathered before them on the path. 

Then she smells it. The coppery tang of old blood. 

Ketz grips her staff, ears flat to her skull. 

“Oh. _Fuck_.”

It’s already too late. The blood trolls are pale, runty little things with makeshift armor. Their weapons are scavenged from bone and old iron. Most of them are naked or near to it, the strongest or highest ranked among them clinging to ragged shawls like they’re made of fine silk. They’re laughable, really, and they cut through Zuldazar’s paladins and their golden armor like butter. If one falls, another leaps to take his place. They fight with knives, with spears, with their hands and teeth. 

Ketz has been in scrapes before. She fought demons side by side with the Alliance and then she turned right around and killed those same warriors when the tides shifted. She’s brought down monsters, men, and beasts that dreamt of being gods. Death is another step in the road, one she knows intimately but has thus far managed to avoid. 

She’s not afraid when she falls. Not when the little troll kicks her staff away and jams his tusks at her throat. Not when the knife goes into her side with a sharp and sudden pain. 

Everybody kicks it, eventually. 

Then the troll’s eyes go wide and something roars. His head explodes in a shower of blood and bone chips and he drops, mouth agape with shattered teeth. 

The grunt’s eyes gleam red and she roars again, brandishing the hammer. 

“Master Gearstruck! Get us out of here!”

Ketz touches the knife in her side. It hurts too much for words. Her brain spins, trying to comprehend. Somehow, she stays conscious. 

Above them, insects buzz. They must smell the blood. Ketz waves her hand absently. “None of that…”

“Master! I do not want to die yet!”

“Well, if you you’re going to _complain_ about it,” Ketz murmurs, and pulls at the arcane with her hand. 

The world tears. And they fall. 

***

She coughs and shudders and feels her body twist with the pain, but she breathes. Lives. 

The portal dumped them somewhere full of sand and, more importantly, not surrounded by blood trolls. Ketz tries to be grateful about this, but she hurts too much for deeper thought. The wind hisses in her ears and she wheezes on hot, dry air, but the world might as well stop existing beyond that. The pain is inescapable. She thinks she’s going mad. She feels everything too much. The knife is still in her side.

Somehow, she lives. 

The grunt carries her over one shoulder. In another situation, Ketz would take this as an insult. She might have set the grunt on fire for it. 

In this one, she pukes more than once and seeing as the grunt never says a thing, Ketz figures that makes them even. 

The grunt walks. And walks, and walks, and walks. 

***

“You are alive.”

Ketz opens one eye. She’s lying on her back. Someone has piled rags over her. Her head is propped up on something hard, possibly a shard of petrified wood. She groans and wishes she hadn’t, though the pain has stopped its world ended throb and settled into regular old excruciating. Pale stone rises on all sides, and there are plants growing gamely up the walls. A ruin of some sort, Ketz thinks. Sunlight streams in from cracks in the ceiling. 

The grunt sits a short distance away, hands folded politely on her knees. The hammer lies by her side. The blood has been cleaned from the weapon, though the iron has a suspicious dent in the middle. Ketz exhales slowly. She can feel a pressure bandage tight across her chest. 

“You should not move,” the grunt says. Her eyes are very blue, Ketz thinks. Oh, the grunt’s hair is a mattered knot and her round, fat face is stained with sweat and dust and dark blood, but her eyes gleam in the dark. Like the ocean. 

Ketz suspects she might have a fever. The other explanation is that she’s gone poetic from the trauma and she really doesn’t have time for that nonsense. 

“How long was I out?” she croaks. 

“Three days, Master Gearstruck. We thought the fever might kill you, but it broke this morning. Your ancestors must have been watching over you.”

“Oh,” says Ketz, whose ancestors were right bastards. “That’s nice.”

She pauses. “ _We?_ ”

The grunt nods placidly. “Mistress Dah’zu kindly offered us shelter from the desert.”

Ketz turns her head, both eyes open now. A troll woman is sitting on the opposite side of the room, clutching a knife. Two small children are holding onto her sash, one of them sucking a blue thumb. The other, slightly older, stares at her with a mix of curiosity and unease. Neither the troll woman nor the children seem to have any sort of pack or supplies, and they’re dressed in rags. The remains of hastily broken manacles hang around the troll woman’s right wrist, and around the necks of the children. 

All right. So this is happening. 

“You richmon?” the troll woman barks. Her ears are pinned back but the hand on the knife is steady as a promise. The smaller child hides behind her back. “She say you big mage with da Horde.”

Ketz knows her ancestors were right bastards. Ketz takes a certain amount of pride in that. Right bastards are the ones who survive. She nods once, wincing. “Yeah. Sure. I’m a big fucking deal back in the world. But I don’t have shit on me right now and I’m thinking the loa don’t take kindly to robbing a gal while she’s kicking it. Kinda takes the sport out of it, you know?”

The troll woman jerks her head at Ketz, showing off her tusks. “I save you, richmon. I don’t be leaving you in the desert so you be owing me some kindness now.”

Ah, bargaining. The great cultural equalizer. 

Ketz tips her head back and grins at the ceiling. “And what’re we thinking that kindness is gonna look like? In monetary figures, I mean. Let’s be specific here.”

The troll woman — Dah’zu — taps the knife against her tusks. _Ting ting_. “You be gettin’ me outta here, richmon. I be an exile by Zuldazar but you make me Horde and I go where I like. Me, dez children. Or I leave you here, richmon, and we see who meets the loa first.”

“Exiles cannot leave the desert,” the grunt explains. “On pain of death.”

“I know what it means,” Ketz mutters. It’s Zuldazar’s mercy, the locals say. Thieves, murderers, and other undesirables all get herded out into the desert instead of executed outright. Not much of a mercy, once you think about it. But it’s a fool who doesn’t accept the hand that’s offered in a situation like this, even if it comes with strings. “Tell you what, momma, you fix me up and I’ll teleport us all out of here neat as you please. You wanna go to Ogrimmar? I’ll drop you and your brats in Ogrimmar. Or whoever the fuck else you wanna go. Just name the place. I’ll even pass you a few coins to get you going, how’s that sound?”

The bigger of the kids is staring at her, wide eyed. Ketz doesn’t like the fear she sees there, but decides to ignore it. She needs to survive, first. The moral quandaries can come later. 

Dah’zul tucks the knife into her sash. “Ya. That sound good.”

They don’t shake on it. They’re not that civilized. 

The grunt watches the exchange placidly, her blue eyes bright and watchful. “Thank you, Master Gearstruck.”

“Shut up, stupid.”

***

Of course, holding up her end of the bargain means Ketz needs to live long enough to open a portal. Normally she can manage small portals just fine. Why, not so long ago she managed to open one in the middle of a skirmish with a knife stuck in her ribs. 

The knife has proven to be something of a problem, though. 

For one thing, Ketz can’t move her legs. For another, she can’t seem to gather the required amount of mana to stabilize a portal long enough to get their entire party through to the other side. And the longer she waits without making the acquaintance of a healer, the worse things will get. She’s been in enough battles to know what happens if a wound festers too long and the hole in her side has started to stink, no matter how many weeds Dah’zul and the grunt stuff into it. 

So that’s fun. 

She does manage to summon some water and mana cakes so they don’t starve to death in the interim, which would have been a good thing if it hadn’t prompted the grunt to get philosophical. 

“All mages can do this?” the grunt asks, examining a mana cake with a critical eye. 

The trolls are too hungry to bother examining the fare and eat like animals. 

Ketz snorts. “Sure. It’s an easy spell. Apparently Lady Jaina likes to make apples when she’s not freezing folks to death.”

The grunt blinks slowly. “Then, if it is such a simple thing, why do they not feed everyone in Zuldazar?”

“This again? Because it’s fucking complicated, that’s why.”

“It does not seem complicated to me.”

“That’s why you’re a grunt, stupid.” Ketz rubs her eyes, relenting when she notices the trolls watching her. She waves her hand and summons more food. It’s gone within seconds. “Sure, I can feed you lot easy enough. But only because you eat fast. If you left there, it’d fade back to nothing. I can’t summon grain you can store, or meat you can salt. You have to eat it now or it’s gone. And I can’t do it for big groups. You wanna feed Zuldazar? You’d have to line a whole bunch of mages and make sure they keep on casting until everybody’s had their fill. And then you’d have to do it again, every day, at every meal.”

The grunt watches her silently, almost expressionless. 

Ketz relents slightly. “The Nightborne tried it, at first, but it wasn’t sustainable. This is a stop-gap, you know what that is? It’s so we don’t die. Doesn’t mean it’s any way to live.”

Explanation delivered, Ketz closes her eyes. Maybe if she sleeps for a bit, she can recover enough mana to get out of this desert and away from the grunt’s questions. 

“Master Gearstruck?”

“ _What_ , stupid?”

“Even if this is a stop-gap, even if it is difficult, it could still be done,” the grunt says, as if it really is that easy. “The mages could line up in a specific place, at a specific time, and feed anyone who comes.”

Ketz cracks a single eye. The grunt is watching her, hands folded ever so politely in her lap. “How old are you?”

“I am seventeen, Master Gearstruck,” says the grunt. Her blue eyes are warm and watching, even in the dark. 

Ketz doesn’t look away. She wants to, but she doesn’t. “Wait a few years, if you live that long, and then you’ll figure out how the world really works.”

“I know how the world works,” says the grunt. Her brow furrows. “Do you think you are the first to say that? I know it is difficult, that many die and often those deaths are not good. And I am told, this is hard. This is hard and because of that we will do nothing. I am no mage, but you tell me this is not a difficult spell. You could feed these people, but you will not.”

“If you haven’t noticed,” Ketz snaps, “we’re kinda at _war right now._ ” 

“And one day we will not be at war, and still people will be hungry. And still you will do nothing,” the grunt continues, in that same placid tone. 

The trolls watch the exchange in silence, the children clinging to Dah’zul’s sash. 

“It’s just how the world is,” Ketz murmurs. 

“That is a lie you tell yourself,” the grunt says, ever so softly. “And it is a comforting lie, perhaps even a good lie, but that does not make it true.”

“Don’t you ever shut up?” Ketz asks, desperate. She doesn’t want to have this conversation. Not with the grunt, and especially not with the trolls watching her so intently. They’re going to remember what she says. They’re going to take her answer inside them and keep it close and this thing that shouldn’t matter one day will. 

Ketz Gearstruck isn’t a fool. She knows how people turn. 

“I stuttered horribly as a child,” says the grunt. Her eyes are bright and very blue. “So for many years I did not speak at all. That was a choice, Master Gearstruck. I told myself, this is the best. This is how I am. But that was a lie, just as you lie. We can do whatever we like.”

***

The grunt’s name is Hakua. It comes out not because Ketz asked, but because one of the troll’s brats calls for the grunt in a game and then there’s no way to avoid knowing what the round-faced orc is called. Hakua, of no tribe and no title, just Hakua, who sits with the troll children and lets them hang off her massive shoulders and pull at her hair. She sits there without complaint, lifting the children up into the air with care and leaning in close so they can examine her tusks — smaller than their own, but not so different in the end. 

The children have names as well. The girl is Teza and the boy, who never utters a word and hides whenever Ketz looks at him too hard, is called Beetle. They aren’t Dah’zu’s children, or at least not by blood. 

This is explained later. 

“Thieves,” Dah’zu says, eying Ketz with suspicion as she changes the bandages. The wound on Ketz’s side isn’t healing like it ought to. The troll woman attends to it dutifully, though not without some small amount of malice. “Dey be taking from the richmon and now dey exiles. Now dey be my children, otherwise they be dead.”

Ketz grunts. She’s in pain, though not as much as before. Vaguely, she thinks she’s dying. “And what’d you do to get sent out here?”

Dah’zu tucks her chin in, displaying her tusks. 

“Don’t be coy, we’re all friends here,” Ketz mutters. It’s possible she has a fever again. Or maybe the threat of her impending demise has killed any self-preservation she might have possessed. She’s been fighting for the Horde her whole life, against foes much larger than she could ever be. Dah’zu could crush her in one hand, but she’d hardly be the first to try. The threat goes dull after a while. “Stupid over there’s practically adopted your brood.”

Dah’zu cuffs Ketz about the ears. 

“Ow!”

“You be rude, richmon.”

“You’re hitting a sick woman, that’s what you’re doing,” Ketz mutters. 

“She be protecting me children, and that be more than you,” Dah’zu returns coolly. “Maybe you die and we be trapped here, but she protect dem.”

Ketz groans, clapping a hand over her eyes. “You have low standards, Dah’zu.”

The troll cuffs her again. She never does say what got her exiled.

***

Ketz sleeps for a whole day after that. The fever returns. She opens her eyes and sees nothing, and everything. She sees her family as they were back on Kezan before the dragon came, she sees the man she almost married burned by green fire on the Broken Shore, and she sees Dah’zu and the grunt sitting across from each other, holding hands. A small fire burns in the corner and starlight flows in from the cracks in the ceiling. Words are being spoken, with Dah’zu’s sharp tone and the grunt’s easy cadence, and the two troll children are standing in solemn attendance. Paying witness. 

Something is happening, Ketz thinks. She can’t imagine what. 

Then Dah’zu and the grunt lean forward, hands still clasped, and touch their foreheads together. 

Later, much later, they kiss. 

Oh, she thinks. That’s happening. 

The children watch the exchange with the same solemnity as before. The boy puts flowers in his mother’s hair. The girl, Teza, reaches out and tugs on the grunt’s tusk. Then she puts a small, copper ring around the tusk with the air of a ritual. The grunt removes a lock of her own hair with a knife and hands it to the girl. 

Something has been decided between them, something that does not include Ketz. But the pain has returned to her side, where the knife made its acquaintance with her ribs, and Ketz puts a hand over her eyes and sleeps again. If she dies, she won’t have to deal with the latest bullshit. 

***

The boy is staring at her. He prods her with a stick. 

Ketz growls, cracking a single eye to glare at him. Her vision is blurry and full of strange colors. “ _What?”_

“You be auntie Ketz now,” the boy informs her solemnly. “Hello, auntie.”

Ketz thinks about that for a moment. 

“Oh,” she says, aghast. “Those two got married, didn’t they? _Fuck_.”

It’s not like she’s against three day romances, or whatever this disaster is. Hell, she’s seen enough folks get hitched on the front lines only to die a few days later, so it’s not like the idea is a foreign one. Love is — love is whatever, but this can’t be good. Sure, Ketz promised to drop Dah’zu and her brats off somewhere in exchange for the whole not-dying thing, but _somewhere_ couldn’t be Zuldazar, where Ketz and the grunt are currently based. And where the grunt’s blushing bride can’t possibly return, on pain of an unpleasant death. 

So, that’s great. That’s just fucking great. 

Ketz pinches the bridge of her nose. “They’re plotting against me.”

“Why, auntie?”

“Because they can.” Ketz eyes him a moment. “Thought you didn’t talk.”

“Mama Hakua say, she not talk for a long time. But then she listen and talk and listen more, and now she talk all the time,” the boy says. “She tell me, it good to talk. It good to ask questions.”

“ _Mama Hakua_? Urg.” Ketz flops her hand down, digging her nails through the sand. This is great. This is just fucking great. “You know she’s just a grunt, right? Sure, she’s a bad looking bitch out here in the boonies, but the moment we kick up in civilization there’ll be a hundred more where she came from. And they’re better, stronger, and sure as fuck faster than she’ll ever be.”

The boy tips his head to the side. “Will dey play with me?”

“Depends. What’re you gonna do for it?”

“Do?”

“What’re you gonna offer to make it worth their while,” Ketz says. He’s a thief and an exile, he knows how the world works even if his mothers don’t. 

“Dey want things, to play with me?”

“To let you stay. And not kick your ass back to the desert. C’mon, kid, whatcha got?”

He’s a smart little fucker, Ketz thinks. He’ll figure something out. 

The boy considers that. “Dey want strong ones, or ones the loa bless, but only Jani ever show me kindness.”

“Ah, you can do better than that,” Ketz says, encouraging. “C’mon, you’re a thief. Ever think of branching out, going professional? There’s a demand for that. We got plenty of thieves and motherfuckers wearing the red. Sure, you’ll probably have to kill some folks, but that’s not much of a surprise these days. 

“No,” the boy says, nice and polite. “I stay with Mama Hakua and Mama Dah’zu. Not be killing anyone. Not be stealing.”

Ketz doesn’t laugh, though she wants to. “You’ll be stuck out in the sand with those idiots, thinking like that.”

“Den I stay with them, in the sand. Dey want me, auntie,” the boy says, as if this is a very great and precious thing, to be wanted. “Dey want me, not stronger or blessed me. Just me.”

***

“You’re plotting things,” Ketz informs the grunt later, when the brood is stuffing their faces with mana cakes. 

The grunt blinks down at her with that same placid expression she always seems to wear. “I am not plotting against you, Master Gearstruck.”

“You’re going to be in a shitload of trouble when we get back. You know that, right?”

The grunt smiles. 

“Don’t do that, stupid,” Ketz warns. She tries to sit up and can’t quite manage it. “Don’t smile and pretend it’s all going to be fine because it fucking won’t.”

The grunt eases her up, a single broad hand against her back. “Did you know, in the old world, the orc clans would exile anyone who became terribly injured. They said it was to protect the whole of the clan. They said there was no room for weakness. I think they would have killed you, Master Gearstruck. Your legs will not work again.”

It’s all said rather matter-of-factly. 

Ketz slaps the grunt’s hand away. “Yeah, maybe they would have. So what?”

“The matrons at the orphanage often talked about the old world,” the grunt continues, folding her hands in her lap. The ring in her tusk stands out far too much. Anyone could look at her and know something had changed. She’ll never be able to stand in a line and blend in with the other grunts. “Strength was everything, but only a certain kind of strength. Then they came to the new world and that strength was not enough. So we have changed, Master Gearstruck, but perhaps we have not changed enough.”

“That’s dangerous,” Ketz warns her. “In this war, it’s fucking dangerous to talk like that.”

“Life is dangerous,” the grunt says placidly. “So I say, I will change. I will be strong in a new way, and I will take this woman and these children as my own. I have no clan from the old world. No one could remember who my parents were. It was a sad thing in the orphanage, Master Gearstruck, to not know what you are. But I know what I am now, in this world. And so I will make a new clan.”

“You can’t just _make a new clan_!” Ketz hisses, though she knows very little about how the orcs actually do this sort of thing. But she knows about traditions and the blood price attached to changing them. Worse, she knows what happens when the ones without any power challenge the ones who hold it. Grunts are nothing, have nothing. Exiles have even less. They’ll get themselves killed for their principals and accomplish nothing.

Even worse, they’ll drag her down into the muck with them. Ketz didn’t get stabbed just to die of politics. 

“No?” The grunt smiles again. “I already have. I am Hakua, Master Gearstruck, and my mate is Dah’zu. We found each other in the sands, under dark circumstances, so we have made a new fate for ourselves. Our children will live and all who join us will live, and live as they wish to. Do you wish to know the name of our clan, Master Gearstruck?”

Ketz closes her eyes, before the insanity can catch her too. The grunt, Hakua, is as calm as ever. “Sure, what the fuck. What’re you gonna call your clan of idiots?”

“The Open Sky. I am Hakua of the Open Sky, Master Gearstruck. And I will live as I choose.”

***

Night comes in due course. Ketz watches as Hakua and Dah’zu fuss with Hakua’s armor, adding straps and adjusting buckles. The children are drying roots and ragged looking herbs, each packaged carefully with scraps taken from Hakua’s cloak. They’re preparing for a journey, Ketz realizes. Probably got tired of waiting for her to die, since she’s clearly not going to manage a portal anytime soon. 

She grunts, fighting to sit upright until Hakua comes and eases her up. “Come to your senses yet?”

“We are going to walk, Master Gearstruck,” Hakua tells her gently. “The desert ends. We will find a way to live, however we must.”

“I can see _that_ ,” Ketz points out, somewhat peevishly. “Were you planning on knifing me first, or just leaving me to die?”

Hakua blinks, looking surprised. “We are not leaving you.”

“Wait, what?” Ketz stares at her, unsure of how to take it. Someone like Hakua doesn’t lie well. Her eyes are bright and stupidly sincere. She probably means it. “Right, and how do you imagine that’s going to work? You forget my legs can’t do shit anymore?”

“We build you a chair, richmon,” Dah’zu says, lifting a part of Hakua’s pauldron for Ketz to examine. Bits vaguely resembling stirrups have been added, along with several other thick straps. Someone goblin sized could, potentially, strap themselves in and perch somewhat securely on an orcish shoulder with a contraption like that. 

Ketz rubs her eyes. “You’re going to…what? Carry me on your shoulder?”

“Yes, Master Gearstruck.”

“That’s a thing you’re doing.”

Hakua nods, a faint smile on her face. “That is a thing I am choosing to do.”

A different kind of strength, Ketz thinks, and pinches the bridge of her nose. Right, then. “You’re aware this is desertion.”

“I am aware,” Hakua says. She looks to Dah’zu and her expression softens, all fondness. “You think I am stupid. You are not the first to think that. But I mean to leave something worthy to my children, to those who come after me, and if I want to do that, Master Gearstruck, then I must act. So I will act, and the world will react. Perhaps we will all die. Perhaps we will not. Nonetheless, we will act.”

She offers her hand. “Will you come with us, Master Gearstruck? Our world will be different. I hope it will be better. We will try our best, to make it better.”

Ketz looks at her, thinking of the almost-husband she lost to the Legion and then to Dah’zu and the kids who call her auntie. Finally she looks to Hakua, who has a name and a plan — however foolish — to change the world. 

“Ah, fuck it,” she says. “Let’s do this.”


End file.
